Switch: Has-Been Heroes

My PlayStation 4 lies fallow, and my gaming PC gathers dust. But this was foreseen and expected. Someday I will lay down my plow and once again take up the sword. For now, though, this whole rearing a little person thing doesn’t allow me much room.

I do sometimes get to play a bit at night or in the small hours of the morning – times reserved for sleep or frivolity. For the first several weeks of my son’s life, I vacillated between my 3DS and my Switch (which I resisted for quite some time, but has grown on me). Nowadays the Switch is my go-to. When you need to be able to run to the kitchen for your spouse or pop a pacifier in your infant’s mouth with all due haste, the ability to pause your gaming on the fly is a necessity. The ability to play the same game in bed or in a lounging position on any couch or other mostly flat surface is also highly desirable.

I’ve been playing Has-Been Heroes. There are other games on my radar, but right now I’ve got to stretch what I’ve got, and it isn’t really that much of a challenge (putting aside my compulsion to hoard and stockpile both books and games to consume “eventually”).

This game starts off simple. “Oh, you just move these guys between lanes and cast spells when they’re off cooldown. This may get old fast.” Then you begin to discover the way the different elements interact. Water + fire creates steam, which slows enemies. Wet enemies buffeted with wind spells will freeze. And this is just scratching the surface.

Then you start to unlock new characters, items, spells, map nodes, enemies. And there are tons of these unlockables.

Suffice it to say this game’s got a lot of potential mileage, if you’ve got the stomach for it. I can’t accurately approximate the importance of luck vs skill, but both are necessary to complete runs as the game progresses. Sometimes you just get shit spells or can’t find enough battles to fill your coffers. Other times may be described as “serendipitous.” The worst is when you squeeze a treasure goblin or two and are sitting on 1,000 gold right before dying to some bullshit. Ah, what could have been!

I often need to put the Switch down for a while at the end of a run owing to my “this is bullshit!” reflex, but before long I crave another potato chip and I’ve started it up again.

If you are curious what this game is about, here’s some low-context nonsense:

Fucking guy. Can’t even say he got lucky – that combination of spells looks absolutely mediocre to me. Maybe I just need to git more gud.